Category: Audio & Conversational interfaces

To absolutely no one’s surprise, I agree with this. Kafka articulated something I’ve been trying to say whenever I’ve written about the related issue of programmatic podcast advertising — but obviously, a whole lot better than I ever could — which is to essentially point out that rapid growth, as well as the implementation of technology and practices that push hard for rapid growth, often come at the expense of quality and general thoughtfulness of a space.

At the Digiday AI Marketing Summit this month in Santa Barbara, California, we spoke with leaders from 37 companies interested in applying artificial intelligence to marketing and learned about their plans for voice marketing. Check out our earlier research on AI’s potential to replace media buyers here. Learn more about our upcoming events here. Continue reading “Digiday Research: Voice is a low priority for marketers”→

From the time I was a child, I’ve enjoyed listening to people read aloud — from parents and teachers reading storybooks to spoken-word nights at college to audiobooks on long journeys. There’s something quite soothing and somewhat magical about the written word coming to life with voice. While I listen, my eyes are free to look up and gaze out a window, my hands are available to tinker with a puzzle or pet a cat. Continue reading “Read to me: ReadSpeaker for everyone!”→

WASHINGTON, D.C., January 23, 2018 – Blackboard and ReadSpeaker are furthering their partnership to help instructors worldwide improve the accessibility of course content for their students. Currently, ReadSpeaker is Blackboard’s exclusive text-to-speech provider that is fully integrated within Blackboard’s learning management systems, supporting Universal Design for Learning (UDL). Now, as part of this extended collaboration, ReadSpeaker’s text-to-speech technology will also be integrated within Blackboard Ally as an offline audio alternative for course content. This allows students to automatically access an MP3 version of content added by the instructor into the LMS. Continue reading “Blackboard and ReadSpeaker Partner to Enhance Accessibility of Digital Course Content”→

Back in October, the BBC organised a hackathon as part of their newsHack series. This time, they focused on Conversational User Interfaces (CUI) and, for the occasion, invited other news organisations to take part. The FT joined in with a pluri-disciplinary team (editorial, UX design, software engineering).

As we enter 2018, it’s clear the expectations of intelligent assistance providers and enterprise practitioners are more in balance than ever before. It’s also clear that the number of “known knowns” is growing rapidly.

Amazon’s Alexa is leading the AI assistant pack. Echo devices are dominating smart speaker sales, and that was before Amazon brought the devices to more than 80 nations around the world. To defend its crown, Amazon moved fast this year to outpace competitors like Google Assistant and Microsoft’s Cortana. Apple’s delayed HomePod is due out next year, while Samsung and Facebook are also reportedly planning to debut smart speakers. It can be challenging to keep up with all the features Alexa has added to stay ahead of some of the largest tech companies on the planet, so here’s a rundown of everything Alexa learned to do this year. Continue reading “Everything Amazon’s Alexa learned to do in 2017”→

Publishers have been enthusiastic about voice assistants like Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant this year, often undaunted by the fact that these platforms require bespoke content, and the route to monetization is still unclear. After promising levels of its audience returned each week to use its Alexa skill, CNBC’s global ad sales team will start selling audio sponsorship packages to advertisers in the next few months. Continue reading “CNBC eyes monetization after its voice audience doubled this year”→

Did you hear the news? Five innovative ways of implementing audio in newsrooms

The second half of 2017 has been saturated with talk about news organisations investing significantly in video. In all that talk and speculation, I noticed an important topic being overlooked: audio. Here, I’ve looked into some recent experiments in digital audio news and podcasting I was curious to learn more about. Continue reading “Five innovative audio implementations in the news industry”→